Introduction

Macrostructural analyses of globalization look for universal patterns of constraint and consistency, seek out traces of choice and necessity in institutional behavior. Most scholars subscribe to the idea that financial systems are globalized insofar as global stocks of wealth can move freely within and across national borders to purchase any financial or nonfinancial asset anywhere in the world. So financial globalization opens more market-based financing opportunities while at the same time undermining state redistributive policies and hence indirectly redistributing the financial risks and costs of housing services more squarely onto households. The shift from the profile of housing services delivered before and after globalization is likely to be quite dramatic because housing is so singularly expensive. Despite the power of globalization, however, all the problems of household insecurity and risk-bearing cannot be traced solely to financial globalization processes. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.